


Dusk

by Pinkstar14



Category: Warriors - Erin Hunter
Genre: But I have 0 ideas, Gen, I thought of the prologue separately and now I wanna try to turn it into a real story, So I'll wing it and see what happens, Will update tags as I do!, WindClan, WindClan Main Characters, for now uh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 17:10:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7181807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pinkstar14/pseuds/Pinkstar14
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I came up with a cute short story and then I thought "but what if foreshadowing actually" and now here I am trying to turn this sweet, very short one-shot into a full-fledged book. Will change this description when I have a more organized plot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dusk

Morning light danced over the clear, fresh snow, illuminated the powder with the slight purple tint of dawn. Leaf-bare in the wide open moors was a beautiful sight, an endless stretch of brand new snow to cover the old, melting layer underneath. It buried the golden grass. Smothered it. 

Rabbitpaw’s tiny brown paws sunk into the snow up to his ankles when he walked. He wasn’t small for his age; it was his age that was small. He had hardly reached six moons and this was his first journey outside of camp. His mentor, Sorrelcloud, stuck close by his side. Her short tortoiseshell fur did little to keep the cold out. Both of them were openly glad to live in WindClan and joked with each other that those forest-dwelling cats must be freezing their butts off without the sun unblocked directly overhead.

Their conversation faded away with the incoming smell of prey. Sorrelcloud whispered for Rabbitpaw to stay where he was. “Be very still,” she mewed, “And watch me closely.”

He nodded with a stiff-jawed expression of determination but his tail tip twitched anxiously. He, too, had short fur and trembled a bit naturally with his legs half-buried in snow. The tabby did everything he could to stop so he wouldn’t scare the rabbit off - as if a little shaking from a great distance was enough for it to see them.

Sorrelcloud crouched. She peeked over her shoulder to make sure her apprentice was looking. He was, but not at her. Rather, Rabbitpaw’s eyes were darting around in search of the prey she was stalking.

Eventually, though, he settled on watching her. She crept forward, movements slightly exaggerated to make them easier for Rabbitpaw to see, and then pounced. Even during the short chase he wasn’t able to see what she was after until she brought it back. A dead rabbit hung in her proud jaws, stark white for blending in with the weather.

Rabbitpaw had seen rabbits before on the fresh-kill pile at camp plenty of times. And he knew he wasn’t misremembering their colour - he had been named after them for StarClan’s sake! And he was a _brown_ tabby. 

His ears fell back as he thought about this. Sorrelcloud set the rabbit down and asked what was bothering him without losing her smile. He answered with a question of his own, “Where did all the brown rabbits go? Are they coming back?”

“The brown rabbits didn’t go anywhere,” she answered, flicking her tail towards the corpse. “Their fur changes to white every leaf-bare to help them hide from us hunters. These are the same rabbits, just a different colour. They’ll be brown again when it’s warm out.”

Rabbitpaw’s ears flicked. He stared at the prey for a good while before snapping his worried gaze up to her. “Am _I_ gonna turn white!?”

His mentor laughed. “No,” she meowed, then added as a joke, “Unless you roll around in the snow. _Then_ you’ll be white for sure.”

She picked up the rabbit and turned around, walked away, not realizing that her apprentice had sorely misunderstood and was now watching his paws as he followed. If he tripped and got too much snow on him, he thought, his fur would turn white and his friends and family wouldn’t know who he was. Rabbitpaw was extra careful about where he put his paws for the whole rest of leaf-bare. 

**Author's Note:**

> I want this to be a longer story so let's see if I can come up with one WISH ME LUCK


End file.
